HP Officejet Pro 8500A Premium e-All-in-One (CM758A#B1H)

I have a small Business Consulting business and routinely use all of the functions in the All In One Printers. Inkjet is a better fit for us than is laser. My 5 year old HP 8500 Pro was dying a slow death with the scan function the first to go followed by the fax function. I know, and like, HP All In One products and wanted another top line as a replacement. HP is getting ready to replace the 8500 series with a new model and there was a fantastic deal (less than half price) on the 8500 Premium model on Amazon. This has several significant upgrades over the last model.This has replaceable print heads. The old days of worn print heads causing "streaky" printing are now over. In our hands, the print cartridge efficiency is much better providing higher page counts as well as improved color output. The wireless capability is seamless among all types of complementary products; tablets, smart phones, etc.. The touchscreen interface is intuitive and allows for all functions to be easily controlled from a single 4"x2 1/2" screen. This functionality is also duplicated through your computer / other devices so if the screen should fail you are not out in the cold. The Scan interface is Vastly improved. It also has direct interface with USB and a full menu of SD Cards that allow full windows like functionality from each of these storage devices through the touch screen or your computer. Set up was a breeze and completely automated with all functions working flawlessly including OCR.We have used this as our primary office workhorse now for over two months and are very pleased with the performance and multiple interfaces. An Excellent Value!

This HP 8500 is just another of a series of screw-ups by this company that can't seem to do ANYTHING right. The print quality is good, but that's where it ENDS. This is the slowest all in one printer on Earth - every few seconds it begins "checking printer" or "checking printheads" and will sit in this state for MANY minutes. Print a few sheets, and it's back to many minutes of checking this and checking that - in fact that is what this printer spends MOST of its time doing! Just to start this printer and get ONE page printed takes SEVERAL MINUTES while it does all this ridiculous "checking".The duplexer is 100% USELESS. In order to use the duplexer, you MUST allow the printer to REDUCE the size of the copy! THERE IS NO OTHER WAY so I am back to MANUALLY flipping documents to get both sides printed.Heaven forbid if you are ever in a hurry to print something, FORGET IT!Lately it is losing the wireless connection and the ONLY way to restore it is to power down and up, taking no less than FIFTEEN MINUTES MINIMUM for all the cylcling and clicking and banging and grunting to finish.Construction quality is non-existent as it is the usual cheap junk plastic garbage that HP is famous for. Don't breathe too hard near it or something will break.Ink cartriges are horribly expensive but after markets work fine.This could be a REALLY nice piece of equipment if HP designers were not so stupid and maybe tried to use this thing themselves so they can see all the issues it has.Again, print quality is good, general fuction is good, but S L O W and NO DUPLEXING unless you want to shrink your work!This is my second HP all in one and the first one had similar issues as well. A plain HP copier also had these "shrinking" issues!An ABSOLUTE PIECE OF GARBAGE!The ONLY possible reason someone would not rate this as junk is because they just haven't had it long enough to know!WAKE UP HP!!!!

Setup: I purchased the HP Officejet Pro 8500A Premium Wireless e-All-in-One (CM758A#B1H) about a month ago after extensive months of research to replace a very glitchy HP 7310 for which it's copy feature stopped working. I guess using an HP printer of some sort for the last 15 years (at home and work) keeps me coming back to HP for printers time after time, (even with all of the problems I received after the last one.) The 8500A Premium e-AIO arrived in good condition. Unpackaging and removing the printer from the box took a while. With no real users manual the pictogram foldout was sufficient enough to get all of the tape removed and set-up for the first time. Since I use a wireless router for my whole house I choose the wireless feature of the router vice cat5 ethernet. Novices may be intiminated by this, but the set-up instruction/pictures were good enough for me. This printer came with two sets of replacement inks (1 set of heads) which I found to be extremely valuable. Once the printer was setup physically I powered it up for the first time and my router network found it's IP Address immediately. I then placed the setup disk in and followed the directions. It took a little more than 45 minutes for the setup to conclude.Performance: I test printed from two computers in my house which are connected wirelessly to my router. Each performed fast and flawless printouts with no jobs dropped. I also tested the fax, copy and scan capabilities. All seem to work great! What is tickling me now is the fact that I have one computer in one end the house (wife's studio) and one in the den (my workspace) and print jobs go through with no problems found. Isn't technology great?! Gone are the days of having to be wired.Overall: The bottomline is that for the money I am happy, although I've only had this printer 2 months. I've used it a lot though. Printouts are pretty good but some pictures are not as bright as I think they should be but banding seens non-existant as of yet. It takes up some room. If your footprint limited be sure it will fit where you want to place it before you purchase it!